by K.A. Rose
Stage 06:
Changing
Kite's eyes narrowed on the URL. It seemed unlikely that the answer to any of his and his group's questions would lie in something as innocuous as a regular website.Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: xXDoreimiXx
ive asked around abit and i tihnk our dungeon is delta house of leaves. that swhat the hallway journal says.
Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: black_MAGE
>ive asked around abit and i tihnk our dungeon is delta house of leaves. that swhat the hallway journal says.lol howd u do that??
Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: xXDoreimiXx
>lol howd u do that??do waht? the color thing? so im not the only 1...
Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: Meme
What's the hallway journal?
Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: ugotjacked
rofl she means the Holloway JOurnal.http://www.geotowns.co.us/athens/17869475/holloway.html
slow load.its really popular and geotowns suxx0rs.
Message: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Weird Dungeon
Author: Sovuroko
OMFG. That's not real, is it?
"You're kidding. That guy?"
It was the following week, in a low-level snow field
on Lambda. A light snowfall left a line of powder on Kite's shoulders and
hung in small clumps from his hair. Someone had been very determined in
programming snowfall.
Sora stood near where Kite sat, atop a Celtic stone
bridge that overlooked most of the field. Elk and Moonstone were with them
too, both a little ways off, quiet and listening patiently. Moonstone could
have been asleep for all they were able to discern.
"You didn't know?" Kite said in answer to Sora,
smiling despite himself.
"Well... A huge history buff like that?"
"Japanese history, that's the thing. He's a samurai
enthusiast. He teaches his students Japanese by showing them Kurosawa.
I mean, come on."
"Ano," Elk spoke up, strain apparent in his voice
to be heard over the two Twin Blades' discussion. "Where's South Dakota?"
"Right under North Dakota."
Kite looked over his shoulder. He knew by the brash
voice, over which existed only the most undetectable of accents, who the
speaker was even before he caught sight of the shoulder-length brown hair
and distinctive eyepatch. And, of course, the katana.
This last distinguishing feature Sanjuro let rest
against the edge of the rough-cut pillar beside him, as he told Kite, "I
can't say I approve of you going around telling my secret to others, Kite.
It makes it difficult to be treated fairly. Where is my incentive to improve
if I know no such impetus exists?"
"... Say again, using smaller words," Kite requested,
bringing a brief round of laughter from the other players.
It could have been his imagination, but the laughter
seemed to have no effect in easing the tension of those around them. No,
it wasn't a heavy anxiety, nothing so thick that it manifested as its own
entity, but something subtler. Apprehension, somewhat.
Presently, Sanjuro was exhibiting the worst of it.
"You gave me some pretty heavy stuff, Kite," he
said. "And I'm not talking about their color scheme. You say you didn't
get far?"
"No, not really."
"I didn't either," Sanjuro told him. It may have
just been a trick of the brightness of the field, but the Heavy Blade appeared
suddenly very pale. "I used an auto-translator on the last big chunks of
it, but I didn't check for accuracy. Nor do I want to, if it's all the
same to you.
"What is this place you've been going to, Kite?"
he asked weakly. In PM, he had transmitted the URL of a file on his own
dumpbox server. Presumably, the translated journal.
"A house. If that says
anything much." Kite wore a pained little smile. "I guess this means you're
not up for checking it out yourself now."
"I really don't know. You look at that and tell
me."
Kite accessed the address only after his comrades
had all said goodbye for the night, promising to meet again in the Lambda
root town the next day. Sanjuro said he couldn't promise anything, given
his teaching schedule, but insisted he would make every effort.
Alone, Kite minimized The World's window
and brought up the web browser. He typed in the URL manually, the full
name of it having burned itself into his brain somehow even from such a
cursory glance.
When it loaded, Kite found that Sanjuro's translation,
thankfully, was absent the pink and green color scheme. It had been stripped
of all features to be reduced down to a basic no-frills html file, and
included a note from the translator at the top.
>>start://_trans.html
Kite-- I'm sure I don't need to tell you this is for your eyes only. This page has already caused enough stir in its own language without being proliferated in auxillery languages as well. Some in my country is already in mass hysteria over this. Don't spread it to your country as well.
If you can, don't approach the house again. I know that's a lot to ask of someone like you, and in all honesty I couldn't expect you to obey. But as your friend I am obligated to caution you that you have stepped into something, literally as well as figuratively, that is more dangerous than even you may be aware.
I only wish this was a hoax.
--Sanjuro
The Holloway Journal
Hi everyone! This page was set up to chronicle my friends' and my exploits into a strange dungeon we found on a Japanese server of The World, that badass MMORPG that just can't seem to die. At the recommendation of some of our mutual fans, we've decided to document all of our explorations through the dungeon, including tons of screencaps.BEWARE, THOUGH! Don't go into this dungeon unless you're a REALLY strong level. It's not that the monsters are a problem --there aren't any-- but only experienced players should approach this thing. Trust us.
Edit: This is Jed here. Look, I'm saying this here and now, I'm closing the site down. There will be no more updates in the future, and as soon as I can I'm pulling everything offline. I can't deal with this shit. Holloway and Kirby are gone, fucking gone. I'm getting pinned with murder charges, can you fucking believe that? I don't even live anywheres close to where they do, but the fucking government's citing anti-cyberterrorism shit. Bullshit. Completely bullshit. Read this while you can, and spread the word. Don't go near this fuckinghouse. Anyone on the Japanese servers, PETITION THE SYSADMINS, FUCKING QUICK. Get that place shut down. Deleted. Something. Show a bit of fucking humanity.
Table of Contents:
Meet the Team!
The House
Exploration A
Exploration #1
Exploration #2
Exploration #3
Exploration #4
Exploration #5
Resources*DOWN!*
Helpful Tips!*DOWN!*
After a few moments' consideration, Kite clicked
on the first link, "Meet the Team!". He was presented with a page of screencaptures
of three The World PCs: A Blademaster, Holloway; a Long Arm, Jed;
and a Wavemaster, Kirby_Wax. Screencaps of various status screens indicated
all three were maxed out players, and were very popular on the servers
they inhabited.
That was it for that page, the attached information
being nothing more than a blurb boasting individual exploits. Kite clicked
to the next page.
The House
First off, this is a field on the Japanese server, Delta! If you can't crack the server, you can't access the field! Visit Matixxa's website [Sanjuro's edit: link removed] for information on how to crack other region servers.Kite glanced briefly through Exploration A, and didn't find anything there of interest. It seemed to be much the same measuring exploit as he and Sora had undergone, but without the satisfaction of the hallway shrinking down to normal parameters. The included screencaps showed other weird facets as well, namely that the corridor that led into the labyrinthine interior of the house was not to be found in the hallway of Exploration A. Another door appeared for them on the opposite side of the not-so-great hall.Once there, you need to get your kanji right for this one, so pay attention. Part A should be
[Sanjuro's edit: this part is removed, because it's not relevant to Japanese readers. It's just a bit of tutorial for Americans who need help locating the right kanji.]
The weird thing is that once you do this, your graphics processor seems to get a glitch, and any time the word house appears it shows up in blue... All three of us got this and no one was able to work out what the problem was, and we're kinda wizzes at this computer stuff!
Edit: We can't figure it out, but for some reason it does it to the website too! That's not our fault, honest! No matter how many times we go over the code and take out that stupid font color tag, it comes right back!
Okay! The field you get warped to is really weird, we're talking massive spooky. Take a look.
[graphics removed. Sorry, but my server space is small, so I only picked the pictures I felt you'd be interested in. You already know what the exterior looks like, right?]
The map is actually pretty simple on the surface, and in fact it's pretty boring. Only three levels. :( It has an insane amount of enemies per portal, though! Weird glitch, I guess. Kirby_Wax says maybe it's a bit of test data left over from the beta version, similar to what you found in some Japanese PSX games in the late 90s, like Final Fantasy VII... His dad says there was this one place down in a well where you'd get some weird cat enemies that wouldn't attack, so you could hit them until they died and rack up massive EXP. I dunno if I believe him...
Anyway, it looks normal, but soon we found there was a HALLWAY that hadn't been there before. This thing had the black chipset that everyone's been talking about. And it really is black inside, so dark. We eventually figured out how to navigate it, though.
Exploration #1
We found out pretty soon normal mapping was disabled here. Kirby_Wax tried mapping by hand but there wasn't any point. Not only is this dungeon random, it randomizes itself every time you step into a new area!Because it was so black, we used spells on ourselves to cast a bit of light. We dropped GP now and then, little piles that we could probably pick up if we lost our way. Hey, we're rich! ;p
Pretty soon we were in a very big area, like the center of a cave. Stupid of us, but we set out straight across it, but after an hour of nothing we got bored and turned back, and that's when the monster started growling.
Edit: In hindsight, we're pretty sure the growl wasn't actually a monster, but the sound of thehousereshifting itself. This was way more logical; whoever heard of roamers in a dungeon?
Edit 2: Jed again. By now I guess I can say ha-fucking-ha. And we thought we were so smart figuring all that out on our own, too.
Stupid of us to think running straight across would do anything, when we didn't know just how big this part of the house was. But so we ran back, hoping to hit the wall again sooner or later. And we never did. It's the strangest thing, but Jed was the one that noticed what we had thought of as the cavern space had narrowed itself down into a regular hallway! Now we were completely lost. Jed was starting to freak out seriously. Even I was getting nervous. We didn't want to reset after all this!But luckily...
Kite stopped, shaking his head. He rubbed the
bridge of his nose. This all was sounding far too similar to his own team's
explorations now, and it felt all too much like a waste of his time to
read it all. Sanjuro had done too much of a good job in porting over what
he could only assume was the author's original inanity of speech.
He skipped forward to Exploration #4.
And immediately wished he hadn't.
Exploration # 4
Kirby_Wax here. Holloway has said the strain of writing this journal in addition to leading the house expedition has just turned into too much for him, so he's graciously asked me to take over posting duties from now on.As I write this we're into day three of Exploration 4. Sorry, but there was so little time when we started. Between all the emails, and losing sleep, and not being able to fucking-figure-out why "house" always shows up in blue NO MATTER WHAT LANGUAGE we're kinda in over our heads at this point. Our item supplies are getting critical. I'll try to keep posting as long as I can. But first, we need to backtrack...
Day 1: We set out early in the morning. It's a Saturday, so I don't have work, and Holloway and Jed don't have school. We stock up on full on all items in ALL the shops on the Japanese servers. By now some PCs here have noticed us and have apparently complained to the sysadmin about us. Stupid xenophobic gooks.
Whatever. Anyway. We used the rope tool set up for us by Judge_X, the same one from last time. If a crack still works, why waste it? Before setting out we ask the guy to do some tweaking to its programming so that it can extend farther, but he gave us a look like we were nuts. Like, what would we need with a rope crack more than five hundred miles long? [Sanjuro's edit: roughly eight hundred kilometers.]It's getting colder the longer we stick inside the guts of this place. Character HP is dropping faster and faster. We're casting Rig Saem even though it's shorter-lasting, just to keep from needing to heal so much. Of course, SP is dropping too.
We take plenty of screencaps, but boosting the contrast doesn't do a whole much, as I'm sure you guys have seen by now.
That night we set up camp by a doorway on the edge of the cavern. [Sanjuro's edit: this is probably what you guys referred to as the Great Hall.] The growl is still there, so we set up shifts. We have the weekend, after all. Jed takes first watch. I take second. Holloway third.
Day 2: I think it's daybreak when we start out, but I never took off my visor to see. I wondered somewhat what would happen now if I came in contact with natural light. Would my retinas explode?
We search a lot of the hallways, but they're all pretty much alike, or at least they don't stay one way long enough to be anything at all, and so they become the same by default of meaning. We find some of the GP we set down last week as a marker. Only one piece remains intact; most of it is missing, some of it is chewed up and mangled.1100110010000100000010010010010011Likewise some of the items from our inventory seem to be going missing. Scrolls, spare equipment, things you don't really notice are there until you check and find that they're gone. Can't take anything for granted here.
Day 3: Back up to speed now. It's Monday, but Holloway and Jed faked sick and their moms let them stay home. I called in to work saying I had pnemonia.
It wasn't too far off.
By now it's getting hard to watch these walls. Poe wrote a song about this once. I listened to it a lot as a kid. No, you know, not Edgar Allen Poe. Just Poe. You know, the band? ...I feel so old.
We screencapped a bit more.
The architecture here would send Howard Roark
through fits. It goes from featureless post-modern to some archaic middle-Renaissance without warning. No color, though. I mean, of course.
I'm down to half-stock on SP curatives now.
Jed and Hollow
ay haven't touched theirs except when they ran dangerously low;they're treating their stores as auxillery once mine run out.HP is down to half, and no amount of potions seem to bring it back up.Will post again soon.
Day 5: I forg
ot to post yesterday. Sorry. The monster was tracking us for a while, didn't give much of an opportunity to pause and open up the blogger.
I don't believe the monster is just the sound of the hallways now. In fact, I refuse to believe it. Nevertheless, we can never find out.
We are but a small spot of light in a sea of darkness. We are the beacon to which all the creatures of the night are drawn.Open prey.Open target.
A source of light is not able to illuminate anything much except
itself.
gtg
Day 7:
ba. daa. ba-ba.
ba. daa. ba-ba.
That's how the chorus went.
0100000101101
0000110110110100
01010110111001110100011001010110010100001100000011
1000010111011it's very cold.
1
0
Day 12: i think i may have been fired. i don't know.
Day 14: we're out of items now.
november in calif shouldn't be this fucking cold
Day 20: stairs!
we have found stairs!
For a moment, Kite found himself waiting before his
monitor, expecting it to come to life with more data. When realization
finally dawned that this was not in a computer's nature, he tried moving
his mouse. Muscles that had grown stiff creaked with the sudden effort
of movement.
Clicking to Exploration #5 presented him with this:
Kite-- This was about where I stopped translating. I'm sorry, but something about this wouldn't settle with me, and I had to give it up. These next bits are all raw auto-translator stuff, and probably not up to snuff.
I realize, unfortunately, this is where you could have used a steady translation the most. But I couldn't do it. I'm sorry.
--Sanjuro
Investigation 5.
As for us there is from supply, the challenge where now we are largest it finds the fact that you live before us. As for us you know that we cannot do this. You propose Horrorway because it takes the lead.However in order to reach into the exit, that takes two many days in us.
Finally there, we consider the fact that stay of execution is taken. I let escape to 2 weeks of work, the high school now do not make Horrorway or Jedu graduate perhaps.
We had decided to go immediately...
And so on.
This was no good, Kite knew. He could barely make
heads or tails out of what was being said. He wondered vaguely whether
Sanjuro couldn't have had the presence of mind to at least give this garble
a once-over before sending it out.
He scrolled down a few pages' worth of text, and
had intended to keep on going, until his eyes snagged on one of the scant
remaining screencaps.
It did not bear the steady, careful consideration
of composition and design that many of the other shots had displayed. This
was shaky, weak, even ported sloppily to a low-quality jpeg, so that much
of what quality may have existed at one time was now irrecoverably lost.
It was a staircase, spiraling inward and downward
far into the darkness below. How far down it may have gone could not be
guessed. But there was somehow a depth there that transcended the poor
filetype port, that suggested to Kite that however much of an illegal rope
crack they had, it wasn't going to be enough.
Shaken, he continued scrolling downward.
Day 12: Item, and us last two degrees using up fast, still haven' T reached to the bottom.
There
are
many
entryways
alongside
the
stairway.
we
do
not
explore
those.
day 3-; it reproduces growl voice.
Horrorway
pursues
sound.Like the cowardly person, we do
not continue to many
amounts afterwards.
not finding,
we return to the
stairway
which does not have Horrorway,
wait for him.
W hen we are attacked, we see
nothing.
Horrorway
it meaning that that light
has
let
to
go
out.
For a while that was all I thought existed.
Then I happened to look back at the Exploration #5 page and found a link hidden among the credits at the bottom of the file. An Easter Egg, of sorts.
Because I've judged this to be a transcript, I proofed it once before saving the translation. However, that is all I'm willing to do for you.
--Sanjuro
Holloway
My name is Holloway Roberts. No, really. I was too fucking stupid to use a fake name for this piece of shit game.Holloway Roberts. User ID #916499. I'm trapped. There's no way out.
Please god someone help me.
I don't know what to do. I'm not in front of my terminal now. I'm not holding any goddamn controller.
I am here.
Someone help.
Please.
[section missing]
I don't know if I can screencap here. No keyboard to type the command in. I don't know if you can see it, but I do. No, not see. But I know it's there. It's waiting. I don't know for what. Fuck.
01010011010011110101001100101110[section missing]
I think Kirby and Jed are dead. I attacked them. They're dead.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
No game over. No continues. Not that, not here.
Oh my god.
[section missing]
Holloway Roberts. User ID #916499. Accessing from Riverford, Iowa. SOS. SOS.
SOS.
...
please.
[section missing]
it's getting cl--
[section missing]
JESUS. FUCK! GOD!
ALT-FUCKING-PRNTSCRN! ALT-FUCKING-PRNTSCRN!
[section missing]
And then this as well:
Kite clicked on the link provided. It loaded a single
.png file. A screencap, of crystal clarity, a frozen moment of time plucked
out of the PC Holloway's existence.
It showed Holloway, curled up in a corner, his polygonal
body disappearing into the fanged maw of a creature of pure darkness.
And then he was gone.
End Stage 06.